Company spotlight: Electio

Unlike other solutions on the market, Electio’s Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) has been cheered by developers, who see the potential to transform their operational efficiency and customer experience. The powerful combination of RESTful APIs, 99.5% uptime and a market leading Software Development Kit (SDK) mean a simple set-up followed by fast realisation of benefits.

What new functionality does the latest version of your system give to retailers?

Along with Electio’s core functionality, our customers have access to a number of modules to get extra from our technology. This includes a Dashboard which allows operations teams to see exactly how they’re shipping each day. With the ability to actively manage carrier spend, volume by carrier and balance loads, along with resolving service exceptions, all in standardised terminology, this makes shipping seriously simple.

Electio’s User Interface also guarantees user engagement. Its dynamic allocation engine automates the allocation of parcels based on business rules you set, meaning there is no need to call upon expensive developer resource. And new carrier services can be added at the click of a button.

The InTouch module provides tracking data to automate proactive communications with your customers, reducing expensive ‘Where is my order?’ calls and improving the customer experience. And our Basket Hero module goes even further by personalising the checkout for each of your customers. Retailers can quickly and seamlessly connect to our library of leading carriers and personalise delivery options available based on a customer’s location and the time of day they are ordering. Our Return IT module makes returns plain sailing for the customer and the retailer.

The Insight module offers a suite of customisable reports for unrivalled insight into carrier performance. With this insight, users can analyse the percentage of shipments delivered within SLAs and understand financial performance and variance between expected and actual costs. Finally, the Invoice Reconciliation module gives true cost management, removing the need for manual invoice reconciliation.

When did the company start and why?

Developing Electio in 2015 was a response to retailers searching for faster, more modern and resilient delivery software to fulfil their needs. Electio can help retailers meet the ever-increasing delivery expectations of the 21st century shopper.

How would you describe your company’s vision?

To become the preferred choice logistics technology company, enabling deliveries around the world. What is your market positioning and what gap are you filling among the UK competition? Our market positioning is focused on enterprise retailers, 3PL companies and channel partners. The gap we are filling comes with the superior quality of our technology and the faster speed of integration we offer.

Who are your customers?

Top500 retailers.

What do you see as challenges in the coming year and what are you doing to meet those challenges?

Keeping up with the demands of customers is a challenge for retailers. Customers want more and more convenience. With Electio, retailers can quickly and easily integrate new carrier services and offer personalised delivery options to each and every customer. Customers are also demanding more when it comes to returns and the cost of dealing with this is a challenge. Electio’s Returns portal can offer more choice for customers with returns.

Electio also gives retailers scalable, resilient technology, dealing effortlessly with spikes in demand, such as on Black Friday.

Next year, emerging tech will further drive down the cost of last mile delivery. Brexit and its impact on the logistics and supply chain industry will also continue to cause concern.

Compete: With rapid access to hundreds of delivery services from the world’s leading carriers, all through one cloud-based SaaS platform, Electio helps growing retailers compete.Deliver on your customer promise: Electio enables you to offer a range of personalised delivery options at checkout to each of your customers. Giving choice and convenience means fewer baskets abandoned.Speed up new carrier integrations: You don’t have to wait months to get new carrier services added to your operations and checkout. With Electio, new carrier services can be integrated in as little as three weeks.Proactively manage carrier performance: Warehouse operations can actively manage carrier performance, including load balancing, predicting spend accurately and handling exceptions, all from one simple dashboard. And coping with volume increases is plain sailing.